The Seamless
Garment Revisited

August 16,
2005

The
late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, former
archbishop of Chicago, endeared himself to liberals, especially liberal Catholic
politicians, by adopting the metaphor of life as a seamless
garment. It
isnt enough to
oppose abortion, he insisted; to be consistent, you have to defend life on
every front, as for instance by relieving poverty and illness.

This came as welcome news to the
liberals, since it turned life into a checklist, in which abortion
was only one of many items, and not necessarily the most urgent. You could
be pro-life, according to the Bernardin standard, merely by
supporting the welfare state.

Well, of course life is, in some
sense, a seamless garment. We should oppose abortion on the same principle
that we should oppose the bombing of cities. But according to
Bernardins way of thinking, you mustnt oppose bombing
Hiroshima unless you also favor setting up an anti-poverty program there.

Conservative Catholics smelled a
rat. They sensed that this seamless garment was really just a
way of minimizing the special problem of abortion, at a time when more than
a million abortions were being performed in America every year.

Liberal Catholics, on the other
hand, loved the idea. But somehow the imperative of consistency worked only
one way. We never heard any of them say, Well, its not
enough for me to support the welfare state. If Im really going to be
pro-life, I must also fight to end legal abortion. Politicians like New
Yorks Mario Cuomo felt they had been vindicated in their empty
personal opposition to abortion.

You know that familiar line:
I am personally opposed to abortion, but ... But you
werent going to do anything about it. If you opposed it
personally, you were in favor of it practically. And everyone
knew it.

Abortion remains legal today
thanks in large part to all those nominal Catholic politicians who oppose it
 personally. That telltale adverb must lift the hearts
of abortionists everywhere.

Cuomo
is still at it. He recently told
NBCs Tim Russert that we  we Catholics
 are hypocrites because we say we oppose
contraception even though most of us use contraceptives like
other people. Of course, it goes without saying, people who call themselves
Catholics while constantly subverting Catholic morality arent guilty of
hypocrisy. To hear Cuomo tell it, hes one of the few honest Catholics
in politics. So why do so many other Catholic pols talk like him?

But has anyone ever refrained
from getting or procuring an abortion because people like Cuomo
personally disapprove of it? Extremely doubtful. Their
message is clear: I cant give my blessing to any abortion, but
please dont let me discourage you from getting one. I wouldnt
want to impose my beliefs on anyone.

I sometimes wonder how such
Catholics would behave if their alleged beliefs were sincere.
Its probably a purely hypothetical question, but if they really thought,
felt, and acted as if abortion were evil, without wishing to ban it by law,
surely there are ways to give this view real force.

Public opinion can be powerful even
when it isnt backed up by force of law. If you advertise allegiance to
the Ku Klux Klan, youll soon find yourself ostracized by people who
dont question your legal right to join the Klan.

In the same way, the country
would change dramatically if every Catholic who professes
personal opposition to feticide would peacefully picket
abortion clinics. But can anyone even imagine a Cuomo, let alone a Ted
Kennedy, doing even that much?

Even so, the country is changing.
Abortion rates over the past decade have reportedly plunged dramatically.
The Democratic Party is now uncomfortable about its unreserved public
identification with the cause of choice. Even Hillary Clinton
has voiced reservations about the practice  and has probably made
more impact thereby than all the liberal Catholics in America put together.

So the seamless
garment has turned out to be nothing but a loophole for hypocritical
Catholic politicians. If anything, it has actually made it easier for them than
for non-Catholics to give their effective support to legal abortion 
that is, it has allowed them to be inconsistent and unprincipled about the
very issues that Cardinal Bernardin said demand consistency and principle.

Joseph Sobran

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